Hypertext systems generally are constructed from a large number of small related "articles" or pages that are "linked" together to form a larger corpus of information. In distributed hypertext systems such as but not limited to the World-Wide Web on the internet, there is often value in constructing collections of hypertext pages that are related and contain linked information. The value of the collection is derived in part from storage and electronic and physical distribution efficiencies that are achieved from collecting related information. Another reason to create a collection is to greatly improve the value of the information to the target audience using the information, by making it easier and functionally richer to interact with it.
Bounded collections also provide context that can be augmented with navigational aids to allow a variety of operations to be performed on all or selected parts of the collection. These operations include, but are not limited to, searching, printing, hierarchical navigation (e.g. previous/next page, table-of-contents, previous/next search matches, etc.) Further, it would be possible to provide a categorized view of the entire context as a list of subjects and related components (pages) even if these groupings were not explicitly part of the hierarchical link structure of the material. Such a view would permit navigation by area of interest combined with more traditional hierarchical navigation. Present methods used by hypertext systems are not well suited to providing such, contexts for the information stored or retrieved from the system, thereby resulting in lost efficiency and function both in terms of the usage and storage/management of the information.